• Firewalls: Rant

    From Sylvia Else@sylvia@email.invalid to comp.misc on Sat Dec 7 16:51:30 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    Really?

    I have to learn a THIRD way of doing firewalling?

    First it was ipchains.

    Then it was iptables.

    Now apparently, that's not good enough, so I have to get my head around nftables.

    On, but wait, this is OpenWrt, which has yet another layer added - fw4.

    And all I wanted to do was upgrade the OS to get rid of a long-standing
    and very annoying race condition that would kill the WiFi at
    unpredictable moments.

    Yes, I know I'm using this router in a rather different way from the
    usual, but sometimes people do things like that.

    Sylvia.
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
  • From not@not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) to comp.misc on Sun Dec 8 07:14:59 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
    Now apparently, that's not good enough, so I have to get my head around nftables.

    On, but wait, this is OpenWrt, which has yet another layer added - fw4.

    And all I wanted to do was upgrade the OS to get rid of a long-standing
    and very annoying race condition that would kill the WiFi at
    unpredictable moments.

    Yes, I know I'm using this router in a rather different way from the
    usual, but sometimes people do things like that.

    I guess it depends how different your usage is, but if you're using
    OpenWrt's fw4 firewall configuration, it's supposed to accept the
    same configuration syntax as fw3, so the switch to nftables
    shouldn't be causing problems if you were using that
    (/etc/config/firewall).

    Mind you the increased bloat of current OpenWrt (or its included
    software, including the Linux kernel, which have been getting
    bigger with each version) has caused me problems. Including,
    as it happens, issues with it killing the WiFi when it ran out of
    RAM. Oh for a maintained software environment that doesn't have an
    obesity problem...
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
  • From Sylvia Else@sylvia@email.invalid to comp.misc on Sun Dec 8 13:35:37 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 08-Dec-24 5:14 am, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
    Now apparently, that's not good enough, so I have to get my head around
    nftables.

    On, but wait, this is OpenWrt, which has yet another layer added - fw4.

    And all I wanted to do was upgrade the OS to get rid of a long-standing
    and very annoying race condition that would kill the WiFi at
    unpredictable moments.

    Yes, I know I'm using this router in a rather different way from the
    usual, but sometimes people do things like that.

    I guess it depends how different your usage is, but if you're using
    OpenWrt's fw4 firewall configuration, it's supposed to accept the
    same configuration syntax as fw3, so the switch to nftables
    shouldn't be causing problems if you were using that
    (/etc/config/firewall).

    Mind you the increased bloat of current OpenWrt (or its included
    software, including the Linux kernel, which have been getting
    bigger with each version) has caused me problems. Including,
    as it happens, issues with it killing the WiFi when it ran out of
    RAM. Oh for a maintained software environment that doesn't have an
    obesity problem...


    I was just iptables directly, since I know how to configure it. I need
    to reverse the trust relationship, trusting wan, and not trusting lan.
    In the end I've just gone through the luci stuff, replacing lan with wan
    and vice versa. Now I just need to figure out the best way of blocking
    access from lan to some wan subnets. Probably not difficult, though it
    would help if I could find a defined syntax, rather than just examples.
    Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place.

    Sylvia.
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@not@telling.you.invalid to comp.misc on Sun Dec 8 16:24:47 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
    I was just iptables directly, since I know how to configure it. I need
    to reverse the trust relationship, trusting wan, and not trusting lan.
    In the end I've just gone through the luci stuff, replacing lan with wan
    and vice versa. Now I just need to figure out the best way of blocking access from lan to some wan subnets. Probably not difficult, though it
    would help if I could find a defined syntax, rather than just examples. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place.

    I've never used the LuCI Web interface, but this page has plenty of
    details for editing the /etc/config/firewall file: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/firewall/firewall_configuration
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
  • From Sylvia Else@sylvia@email.invalid to comp.misc on Sun Dec 8 18:52:08 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On 08-Dec-24 2:24 pm, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
    I was just iptables directly, since I know how to configure it. I need
    to reverse the trust relationship, trusting wan, and not trusting lan.
    In the end I've just gone through the luci stuff, replacing lan with wan
    and vice versa. Now I just need to figure out the best way of blocking
    access from lan to some wan subnets. Probably not difficult, though it
    would help if I could find a defined syntax, rather than just examples.
    Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place.

    I've never used the LuCI Web interface, but this page has plenty of
    details for editing the /etc/config/firewall file: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/firewall/firewall_configuration


    Thanks for the link.

    Sylvia.
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
  • From Salvador Mirzo@smirzo@example.com to comp.misc on Wed Dec 11 20:39:40 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

    Really?

    I have to learn a THIRD way of doing firewalling?

    First it was ipchains.

    Then it was iptables.

    Now apparently, that's not good enough, so I have to get my head
    around nftables.

    That's wild. I remember telling myself---gotta study ipchains. But
    then iptables appeared and I was like---hm, interesting! Maybe my life
    will be easier now. Lol. Perhaps I can be glad I never got around to
    study any of them? The nftables websites says it's a successor to
    iptables.

    I think that's not the way to do things. We should not blindly follow
    along software development. Remember---many of these things will fall. Programming languages for instance. If you're still writing Perl or
    Lisp, say, you're doing just fine. In fact, you are much more
    productive if you just keep using your good tools and let the world move
    on.

    Of course, perhaps you work in a market that is always high on the new
    kid on the block, but then perhaps the best thing is to get out of that
    market.

    I interviewed with a company in Paris once. They didn't hire me and
    called me old school due to C and Lisp. I was a little hurt. I was
    their age, but I think they don't care about my teachers' lessons.
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@ldo@nz.invalid to comp.misc on Thu Dec 12 01:12:06 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.misc

    On Wed, 11 Dec 2024 20:39:40 -0300, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

    I think that's not the way to do things. We should not blindly follow
    along software development. Remember---many of these things will fall.

    These “new” ideas have been around for years, decades. They have already proven themselves in production mission-critical use. They are now
    spreading out from there to become commonplace.
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114